Immigration arrests jump

LAURA WIDES-MUNOZAssociated Press Writer

Published Monday, June 25, 2007

HOMESTEAD -- Afraid to step onto the streets of this rural town, friends of Herman Martinez asked him to bring them milk for their children. Neighbors of Elvira Carvajal sought refuge in her house so immigration agents wouldn't arrest them.

In the weeks leading up to massive pro-immigrant rallies in the spring of 2006, rumors swirled that authorities were on the streets rounding up immigrants across the country. Fear of being caught and deported kept many illegal immigrants, and some legal ones, in their homes.

Homeland Security data released to The Associated Press shows non-worksite arrests jumped in the first half of 2006, up 75 percent over the previous year. Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintains the increase did not come from random sweeps, but from its standing policy of targeted arrests.

In both years, more than two-thirds of those detained already had deportation orders.

"We've said over and over that we don't do random sweeps. We do targeted enforcement," agency spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said.

ICE maintains that it targets people it considers "fugitives," those who remain in the United States despite a deportation order. To ICE agents, a fugitive could be either a known drug smuggler or a retired grandmother with no criminal record. During a search for fugitives, agents can also detain individuals they suspect of being in the country illegally in so-called "collateral arrests."

Since the department was created in 2003, it has steadily arrested more people as its budget and resources have grown, Zuieback said of the spike in detentions. "It's not in the least bit political."

In the first three months of 2006, ICE's fugitive operations program arrested 3,222 people nationwide, according to information released last month, 10 months after the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request. That compared to the 2,174 people arrested in the same period of 2005.

During the height of the 2006 immigration debate, from April through June, the number of arrests jumped to 4,516. That was more than double the 2,234 arrests for the same period of 2005.

Still, the percentages of collateral arrests rose only slightly, from 28 percent to 33 percent.

ICE's numbers don't include worksite arrests, which jumped more than threefold between fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006, from 1,292 to 4,383. The agency refused to break down those numbers by quarter.

Zuieback rejected the notion that the arrests were a timed show of force.

"There's not a lot we can say to somebody who is here illegally that is going to appease them," she said.

"I think we've been very clear that our mandate is to enforce the law, and that's what we intend to do."

Professor Alex Stepick, who heads Florida International University's Immigration & Ethnicity Institute, disagreed. He believes the Bush administration both stepped up arrests and allowed the rumors to build to assuage his conservative base .

"The residual concern on the part of immigrants is part of the Bush administration's policy," he said. "They want to show they are doing something to control immigration."

Last year's protests began in response to what many immigrants viewed as draconian legislation that would have redefined illegal immigrants as criminals.

In late March 2006, tens of thousands students walked out of classes. More than 500,000 people took to the streets in Los Angeles alone. On April 1, thousands formed a mile-long line across the Brooklyn Bridge. And despite the rumors of arrests, on May 1, more than a million people demonstrated nationwide.

Yet even if the random sweeps weren't real, the fear they generated was, said Martinez, a community organizer in the town of Homestead.

The rural town about 30 miles south of Miami is dominated by Mexican, Central American and Haitian immigrants who come to work in South Florida's farm fields and stay for jobs in plant nurseries and construction.

Last year, Martinez repeatedly was called to check out areas where raids reportedly had occurred, only to find nothing. "But I was buying gallons of milk for people afraid to go to the grocery store," he said.

Carvajal, an advocate with the farmworker's association in Homestead, added that many parents kept their children home from school.

Natalia Coletti, who works at the Healthy Start Coalition of Miami-Dade County, said attendance in prenatal classes fell during the week before the May 1 protests. Mothers with high-risk pregnancies refused to come to the clinic despite their complaints of cramps and bleeding.

Homestead resident Lucia de la Cruz, who fled civil violence in Guatemala more than a decade ago, said her husband still headed to his construction job each morning because the couple had no other way to feed their four young children. But de la Cruz, who is here illegally, spent her days in a constant state of terror, waiting for her husband to return each night.

"We are still afraid," she said, "but now we are more used to that fear."